Abstract. Many coastal cities around the world are threatened by tsunamis;
some of these events have caused great impacts in recent times. The loss of
human lives during these events is the main cause of concern of the
authorities, and evacuation planning has been recognized as one of the best
tools for safeguarding the population. In this context, urban design appears
to be critical for the execution of prompt and efficient evacuation processes
to safe areas; however, evacuation assessment has been traditionally carried
out at a large urban scale, mostly taking into consideration urban morphology
and connectivity. In the present work, urban spaces available for tsunami
evacuation are explored in detail by developing a methodology to identify and
classify urban micro-vulnerabilities that may reduce the capacity of the
evacuation routes and hinder evacuees' safety. The method is applied to the
Chilean city of Iquique, affected by an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in
2014.
Abstract. The occurrence of mega tsunamis over the last couple of decades has greatly increased the attention of the research community and practitioners to work hand in hand to reduce risks from these highly destructive threats. Protecting the population through evacuation is the best alternative for avoiding loss of life in the wake of the occurrence of a tsunamigenic earthquake. Therefore, guaranteeing the proper state of evacuation routes is very important to ensure appropriate movement to the safe zones. This study carries out a detailed analysis of possible evacuation scenarios, considering the actual state of the escape routes of Iquique, a Chilean city prone to tsunamis, with a substantial amount of urban micro-scale vulnerabilities, i.e., elements that obstruct or complicate pedestrian flow. The quantification of the delay in evacuation processes resulting from the presence of urban micro-vulnerabilities is carried out through micro-scale Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). In addition, these results are integrated with high-resolution tsunami inundation simulations, allowing for an estimation of the potential number of people that the tsunami may reach under different scenarios, by emulating the dynamics and behavior of the population and the decision making regarding the starting time of the evacuation.
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